Aureol, Peter

A master of theology at the University of Paris and a member of the Franciscan order, Peter Aureol helped shape the philosophical agenda of the fourteenth century. His original and provocative views were widely discussed during the later Middle Ages, but his influence was rather indirect since his views almost always met with hostility. Although Aureol wrote extensively on a wide range of philosophical and theological issues, his most-discussed contributions to philosophy, in epistemology and metaphysics, centre on his theory of esse apparens (apparent existence). Aureol, known as the Doctor facundus (Fluent Doctor), was born near Gourdon in the south of France. He seems to have joined the Franciscan order in his teens, and to have studied at Paris, perhaps in 1304. There has been speculation that he was a student of John Duns Scotus at that time, but there is little evidence for the claim. Aureol's magnum opus, his In quatuor libros Sententiarum (Commentary on Peter Lombard's Sentences), began taking shape in his lectures at Franciscan houses of study in Bologna (beginning in 1312) and Toulouse (in 1314).